


You Piss With the Dick You Got

by istia



Series: Rare Pairs [14]
Category: Hyena Road (2015)
Genre: M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:41:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22842649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: Pete has an idea of how to deal with his and Ryan's overload of adrenaline after their embattled foray into Kandahar.
Relationships: Pete Mitchell/Ryan Sanders
Series: Rare Pairs [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/390025





	You Piss With the Dick You Got

Ryan came out with that succinct description of our fuckingly fucked situation in the middle of the hairiest time, as the three of us were moving through Kandahar City from alley to rooftop to dangerous alley trying to avoid Tallies, who suddenly seemed to be everywhere, bullets spraying the stone walls around us, RPG's creating new gaps in the architecture, and the guttural sound of AK's filling the air: Ryan; Walid, our unarmed translator; and me, an intel guy with a rifle but not much actual fighting ability, making our way from our bombed-out car towards exfil.

Ryan was brown-haired to my white-haired, twenty years younger than me, but I fucked him anyway when we made it safely back inside the wire at KAF.

He'd just been dumped by his Captain girlfriend in a move to protect their military careers, a determination that likely wouldn't last once they were home--if it didn't drop dead even sooner--but that was the state of things at that exact moment. We were both sizzling with the almighty pump of adrenaline that'd carried us through the fast-moving, unnerving, seemingly neverending pilgrimage through the back streets of an ancient city so used to violence that a kid of no more than six years old, playing on a rooftop, just paused to calmly watch us exchange automatic fire with some of his own people on a higher rooftop, then turned back to his game as we moved on. It wasn't even a blip in that kid's day. If one of us, or one of them, had been killed right in front of him, that probably still wouldn't have counted as a blip.

So we were sizzling once we finally reached safety, back to our current home, and neither of us had any available outlet at hand to let off all that pent-up steam. It was dead of night by the time we finished debriefing. The whole fucking base was like a giant slumbering cat, ready to leap awake if poked, claws extended, but presently just purring in the dark. Even Timmy's was shuttered for a few hours before the early birds would appear panting for their coffee and Timbits. The whole damned Canadian peacekeeping force seemed to run on caffeine and sugar.

Ryan had stopped calling me "sir" during that run; I'd become Mitchell. Friends called me Pete, but it was close enough. He'd saved my life countless times on that high-octane journey and I'd had a hand in helping him keep Walid alive. Ryan was a mid-thirties soldier in Afghanistan and I was a fifty-something intel officer on the trail of the elusive and enigmatic Lion of the Desert, the fucking Ghost I was pretty damned sure Ryan had met out of the blue on his previous mission at the village of Haji Baba.

But Ryan had said that thing in the fiery midst of it all that'd made me remember it was all just about getting the job done, which at that moment had just been to keep the three of us alive, however we could with the resources we had. Now here we were, out the other side, so, when we exited HQ that night and paused side by side to take in the quiet chill, such a sweet fucking contrast from the stifling heat and racket we'd been trapped in earlier, I turned my head to look at him. The raw red patch on his left cheekbone, the day's only injury on our side, showed clearly in the base lights. After a moment, he returned my gaze.

"You don't just _piss_ with the dick you got." I tilted my head, waiting. Offer on the table.

He blinked slowly, then grinned. The shared wavelength we'd been on that afternoon was still active, still fizzing like an electrical current between us. He nodded, and we walked with controlled impatience beside each other towards my bunk. My private bunk, given I outranked him: though not in the middle of a firefight where he had all the expertise, and not in bed, where we each again had the exact same goal of getting both of us safely out the other side together.

Safe to resume our normal lives tomorrow and try to get that goddamned road built, which the civilians of Haji Baba and the surrounding area in Panjwayi desperately needed and the Tallies were determined not to let them have. So shit no to that, whatever it took.

You could do a damned lot with the tools you had at hand.


End file.
